VA Dangerous to Veterans

Americans have always prioritized caring for the needs of our military Veterans. The Continental Congress of 1776 was the promise pensions for any disabled veteran of the Revolutionary War. Despite criticism of deficit spending over the last four years, there was universal support for increasing the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) budget by 41% to $140 billion this year. That is why it is so depressing that the backlog doubled to over 900,000 for claims pending applications for disability and the number delayed over a year has skyrocketed by 2000%. Despite this abysmal performance, senior VA executives are eligible to collect bonuses of 35% on top of their lavish pay and benefits.

The ability of the VA and their 300,000 employees to provide service-related benefits has virtually collapsed. Congressional revelations confirm that over the last four years delays newly returning veterans face before receiving disability compensation and benefits are far longer than the 273 days the agency had acknowledged. But inspection of their internal data reveals that for first-time claims, including service in Iraq and Afghanistan, the wait is between 316 and 327 days.

“I’m not surprised at the number of us that kill ourselves … You just get so hopeless”, said Lincoln Capstick an unemployed Iraq War veteran in Indiana, where the average wait is 612 days. His electricity was cut off three times while he waited for the VA to grant a disability claim for traumatic brain injury, headaches and a variety of leg and knee injuries sustained when was run over in the desert near the Iraq-Kuwait border. Veteran’s Administration reports that 22 veterans commit suicide every day.

The VA's disability claims crisis has been compounded by the department's in-house effort to develop a high-tech Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS) promising to streamline claims processing throughput by 40 to 65%. But according to a strongly worded report from the department’s Office of the Inspector General; after spending $537 million on the Web-based system, 97% of all veterans’ claims remain on hard-copy paper. The Inspector General also warned the weight of paper files at their Winston-Salem, N.C., office had compromised the structural integrity of the building.

The project is designed around the twelve “Agile Manifesto” principals for adaptive software development that includes “Sustainable Development”. Since the crushing report was released this January, the top two VA technology officers retired, saying they had accomplished their goals.